This was the title of a thread on a feminist forum I frequent. The member stated that feminism is a new tool for morbidly obese women to excuse their shape or lack thereof: as women it’s their right and shaming them for whatever their body looks like, is misogyny. She proceeds with the typical concern trolling (health), and then concludes:

I’m hoping that this will open the eyes of people who think they are happy.

I think that this sentence especially is a horrid misinterpretation of compassion, if this person has any. There sure is no respect whatsoever to be found here, not even the base respect we should give a fellow human being. If they think they are happy, they probably are and who are you, or anyone, to challenge that? Who are you, or anyone, to tell people how to feel about themselves, and under what circumstances they get to be happy? Let people be. Being fat is not an offense.

I am also sick and tired of hearing the word “fat” and “excuse” in one sentence. Why are excuses even demanded from fat people? More precisely, fat women? After all, there isn’t half as much pressure on, and hatred/discrimination against, fat men. Is it really all about our health? And if it were, aren’t such concerns normally expressed with compassion, tact, and respect? After all, you don’t use such a rude, presumptuous, hurtful, arrogant, judgmental, and disrespectful tone towards other people who you (can?) assume have an unhealthy lifestyle. Plus, obesity can be caused by things that are not in the fat person’s hands. Now, here are unhealthy things people, women, do and get away with unshamed and uncriticized for some reason: Smoking, unsafe sex, unsafe driving, carcinogenous nutrtition, sedentery lifestyle (it’s not just fat people!), anorexia, unhealthy/incorrect/excessive exercise, drug abuse, alcoholism, boxing, loaded gun under the pillow, self-harm etc. are all very unhealthy things to dedicate your life to. Most of them are more, or more definitely, dangerous than being fat. Yet people who do these things, aren’t harassed over their health or health-related appearance half as much as fat women. Women, not men. Why, if it’s all about health? Can anyone answer that? Especially since obesity is only a problem, if at all, for the fat person themselves. Smoking, unsafe driving, and spreading STDs affect others as well as the person practicing them.

Our [fat womens’] health, our appearance, our wellbeing, is not anyone else’s to judge or feel artificially bothered by. As women, we all share the one same burden which is us being dehumanized if we don’t fit silly beauty standards that keep us preoccupied with appearance rather than empowerment, and pleasant to males. Fat or otherwise, it really doesn’t matter. We’re all in the same boat here. In my case, it’s my butt, in another woman’s case it’s her small breasts, or her kinky hair, or her big nose. We are all the object of meat market eyeballing and should not take up this vile practice against our own.

As for being happy… I was never happy, and now that I’ve learned to love and accept my body, I have realized that my unhappiness had other reasons. I have become a lot more positive about life and would never hate or deprive or hurt myself over my size again. They tell you to lose weight to be happy, but how can the constant obsession about calories, food intake, exercise, the sweating, the muscle ache, and the deprivation of your favorite foods, make you happy? If you’re not happy fat, you won’t be happy slim. I didn’t believe it for a long time, but it’s true what some people say: happiness doesn’t necessarily lie in your appearance, it lies much more in how you deal with it.